The song i have in my head.

I haven’t posted for the last couple of days because it was the exact same Saint Four song each morning and what am i going to keep writing about it? It’s a great song, one of my favourites, but i just feel as though i am never going to be able to convince others it is and transfer its effect on me to them, so why bother putting myself through the embarrassment? So i decided to wait for the next one. I was getting afraid it would never come, or that it would be equally as less easily defendable. But it’s this. This is a great song, right? Self-evidently and readily recognised as so. Almost as good as 不思議TOKYOシンデレラ.

Below is a blurry live video of this song at what must be one of Saint Four’s last outings as a group. The money isn’t coming in any more, the songs aren’t charting, support has left and gone on to other things, the production has scaled down, and one of the members has even left. But tell that to the three remaining girls and the dedicated down front, and really throughout the whole building, enraptured, screaming along, pumping their fists, and giving everything that one last time.

née Go Betsy. This song isn’t that good. The band isn’t perfect either. They come from my long history of taking what i can get in contemporary Australian indie pop music, yet none of it ever fitting as well as i’d like. It’s always too much coming from the wrong direction, the wrong influences, too much from incohesive scenes to actually build anything from, too cool, too Melbourne. But this is all we get. I don’t want to denounce people’s efforts, especially when my own are (still, probably forever. Give up life) non-existent, nor use this band’s song as the platform to do so, but why can’t good, well-influenced, well-directed bands exist here like they do in seemingly all other parts of the world? Does anyone want to start one? Or show me where they are hidden? There are some, but wading through the crud to find them is a discouraging thing.

It heartens me to know that history, if it hasn’t already, will show Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd to be the more influential and the only Pink Floyd worth keeping. With the rest left to continue its mortification in the hands of cover bands, a dinosaur music industry and ineffectual music consumers whose lives are conveniently wrapped up and catered to by Mojo magazine. It is sad what happened to him, and i can’t say that the Pink Floyd beyond him would not have gone down exactly the same path had he been allowed to stay… no, i’m sure it wouldn’t have because his “erratic and unpredictable behaviour” was ousted precisely because it was a threat to the commercial success of the group, and what is without him is completely void of his songwriting genius.

Anyway, i don’t want to join a world that cares about musical health above personal health. A retreat to a private life seemed more beneficial to him than a million pompous and boring sunrise performances Pompeii. My favourite stream of British pop music stems from him, lying in tribute directly or indirectly (take the Columbia records imprint and catalogue number from the cover if this single and stick a “Distributed by the Cartel” sticker on the back of it and see). If he was happy at the end of his life, with his family, his gardening and his art, what really is lost?

And this is my favourite Mr. t Experience song. Like Braid yesterday and the Chills before that, i may have already honoured another song with that title, but the truth of now certifies it as this. For the lyrics more than the music, although the song is as perfect as pop punk gets (that’s a high perfect, to my mind at least). I’ve long had Dr. Frank as one of my favourite lyric writers, but that’s due to the genius wordcraft he spins his obsessions of being in love or wanting to be in love around. Here, the time and effort it takes to sound that perfectly dumb is thrown out entirely for the most straight, loving message of faith and care to a person who are suffocating under feeling they’re not enough. Everything i want to say to the people i love who doubt themselves; everything i need to hear myself. It’s one of the most affecting, moving things i’ve ever heard. Honestly: to tears. “I believe in you.” Said with love, that’s all anybody needs.